You may have heard the buzz around Windows 10 Creators Update and its cool new features, from enhanced 3D capabilities and social tools to new and advanced security features. But how can Creators help your business? Let’s go over what we’ve seen so far and find out.

3D features

Microsoft wants to bring 3D software to the masses. The Creators Update aims to make 3D feel easy and approachable by integrating the technology with familiar applications Microsoft Paint and Office.

• Paint 3D can turn a sketch into a 3D graphic with a quick tap. The new sticker tool lets users stamp 2D images onto 3D ones. Love your creation? You’ll also be able to print it on a 3D printer.
• Windows Capture 3D is a scanning app for mobile devices that lets you photograph an object in 3D simply by walking around it while shooting.
• Remix 3D is Microsoft’s new destination for sharing creations. It will serve as a community library that you can add to or draw from. Once you finish a sketch, you can share it with the community and post it on social media.

How it will help your business:

• Have we mentioned Paint 3D will be integrated into Office? It will be a dream come true for heavy PowerPoint users looking to design impactful presentations. To get a better feel for the possibilities, check out Microsoft’s demo here.
• Imagine the possibilities for simple product prototyping. For example, a remote team could collaborate on a design and then print the object in their respective offices for testing. Or you could send a prototype to a retail outlet and print it onsite to obtain consumer feedback.

Connectivity and shareability

Need to message or share something fast with a colleague? In the Creators Update, person-to-person contact is going to be front and center.

• A new taskbar feature called MyPeople lets you quickly connect and share directly with your favorite people (or at least, the ones you talk to the most). Instead of looking for a “share” button within an app, MyPeople lets you drag and drop files directly to a friend’s icon to pass them along instantly. The MyPeople experience is also integrated across universal Windows apps for easy sharing.
• There’s also a new widget that lets you Skype or email your favorites quickly, and even toggle between Skype and email within the same window. (It’ll be interesting to see if Microsoft lets third-party app developers have a spot at the bar, too.)

How it will help your business:

• These friendly little updates will have a big impact on efficiency and team collaboration. They’ll be handy when you’re communicating with your team about a complex project (or even just passing along a simple doc).

Aesthetics and usability

From pen functionality to custom settings, here’s a little more of what’s in store.

• The Action Center is getting a refresh with new sliders for screen brightness and volume, as well as a few other quick actions.
• You’ll be able to personalize Windows 10 with custom accent color options, as well as theme collections available in the Windows Store.
• Love your stylus? Lucky you: There will be full pen support in Word. You can even use it to strikethrough text to have it deleted from a document. Give it a try with the new HP EliteBook x360 and optional HP Active Pen featuring WACOM technology.
• The Edge browser now lets you preview tabs by hovering over them.

How it will help your business:

• Customized aesthetics and multiple usability options offer more ways for your employees to stay comfortable and productive. Plus, your employees will likely be using Creators’ consumer-based apps for gaming and music at home, so they’ll come to expect the same customizations and updated OS at work.

Security

New and advanced security capabilities are designed to better help enterprise customers and IT admins protect, defend, and respond to threats.

• The new Windows Security Center will act as a centralized security management portal, integrating with third-party security platforms and linking directly to the Office 365 Advanced Threat Protection suite to follow an attack.
• The Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) tool will come with new actions and insights such as improved detection, enriched intelligence, and enhanced remediation to help you investigate and respond to network attacks.

How it will help your business:

• The centralized portal will allow businesses to track and monitor threats across their Windows 10 devices and network. This could be particularly attractive to large organizations that need to take faster, more comprehensive security measures to protect their endpoint and email infrastructure.

Device management

Microsoft is releasing a number of “best-in-class” capabilities to help IT teams assess, support, and upgrade devices.

• An advanced Window Analytics dashboard will allow organizations to use their own telemetry for device upgrades, updates, and health processes.
• A new Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) conversion tool will automatically convert Windows 7 devices (which use legacy BIOS) to UEFI. This conversion previously had to be done manually.
• A new mobile application management functionality will help protect data on personal devices, even if the device isn’t enrolled in a mobile device management system.

How it will help your business:

• Even though Windows 10 already improves task management, these improvements alleviate concerns businesses have had when moving to a new OS. These updates will expedite and streamline a number of IT management tasks by moving resources and time-intensive tasks to the cloud.

Source by http://www8.hp.com

For more info about HP products, visit our ICT Hardware website.

Sandvik Machining Solutions (SMS), the world’s top metal cutting tools maker, is looking to build on its expertise in 3D printing and acquire industrial software firms to stay ahead of rivals and adapt to emerging challenges like the rise of the electric car.

A unit of Swedish engineering group Sandvik, it holds a fifth of the $17 billion metal cutting tools market, but the industry has stalled in recent years. SMS organic order intake has declined for seven straight quarters, hit by weak demand from manufacturing and oil and gas customers.

SMS, which contributes about two thirds of Sandvik’s operating profit, has still managed to hold operating margins above 20 percent helped by many plant closures in recent years.

But electric cars are emerging to challenge the metal-dense combustion engine. That implies a less intensive machining process, and improvements in casting technology are likely to weigh on demand for traditional cutting tools, leaving investors wondering where SMS will find its future growth.

Additive manufacturing, often called 3D printing, is also bound to have an impact, as Sandvik’s tools cut parts to shape rather than building them layer by layer.

SMS President Jonas Gustavsson said the wholesale change in the industry and a general customer push for cost efficiency throughout, rather than higher output, were making the company look beyond its traditional hardware business.

“We are quite convinced that we should and need to start looking at a larger part of the production chain. So that is an evolution of our positioning,” Gustavsson said. Sandvik shares are up 50 percent this year, the second best performer on the STOXX Europe 600 industrials index, boosted by hopes for a mining rebound and positive signs from its reorganization efforts.

Intense competition from the likes of Berkshire Hathaway’s IMC Group and Japan’s Mitsubishi Materials is adding price pressure on SMS’s more standard inserts – used to make a wide array of industrial components and car parts – and it is in a continuous flurry of product launches to avoid a commodity trap and underpin prices.

Gustavsson said software firms were high on his acquisition agenda, with the CAD/CAM simulation process one focus of interest, alongside measurement technology and quality assurance.

He is also looking at new commercial opportunities with the expertise SMS had gradually built in 3D printing.

“We are going to want to take a position within additive in one way or another,” he said. Asked where SMS would be in five years, Gustavsson said he still expected its core cutting tool business to be growing.

“I also believe we will have found one or two areas that are strongly linked to what we do today. We are talking about additive as an interesting area that we are looking at, but there are other areas as well.”

Half of SMS’ sales come from the engineering sector, and just over a quarter from automotive.

Growing sales of battery-driven cars over the next decade are a potential blow for SMS, though it is softened by a parallel demand boom for hybrid electric cars which contain both a combustion engine and electric battery and motor.

And Gustavsson said the core cutting tools business was being propped up by an evolution toward more complex materials like composites in many industries that was strengthening demand for SMS’s more expensive, specialized cutting tools.

Round tools were also growing, he said, with increased demand for advanced, five-axis machining and processing of smaller components and SMS was capitalizing on that through product launches.

“This segment is not going to collapse and disappear. But we have to develop our offering so we are not as dependent on the standard inserts volume as we have been,” Gustavsson said.

By Johannes Hellstrom, Source by http://www.reuters.com

 

Technology Article 

SHANGHAI, CHINA–(Marketwired – Nov 22, 2016) – Brocade (NASDAQ: BRCD) today announced that QUANTA COMPUTER (TWSE: 2382), the world’s largest manufacturer of notebook computers, has deployed Brocade-powered New IP networks at factories within its key manufacturing site. The deployment of Brocade IP networking solutions at both the company’s network edge and its data center, dramatically simplifies operations at the Quanta Shanghai Manufacturing City (QSMC) plants and paves the way for the company to employ Software-Defined Networking (SDN) as it diversifies into producing a broader range of digital products.

Quanta Computer has grown to become a $31.5 billion (US) business by delivering manufacturing excellence to major brands including Apple, Dell, Fujitsu, HP, and Sony. Quanta’s decision to adopt Brocade’s advanced switching and SDN solutions within its QSMC plants reflects its ongoing commitment to always providing the best-in-class ODM manufacturing facilities to its global partner brands.

“Competition in the notebook market is relentless and so is the demand to improve manufacturing quality and efficiency,” said Dave Chen, Associate Vice President of Quanta Computer. “Our factories are highly automated and that makes them highly network-dependent with a network edge of more than 10,000 ports now deployed at Quanta Shanghai Manufacturing City, which is a big network administration challenge. We’ve deployed Brocade networking solutions at Quanta Shanghai Manufacturing City because they provide a radically simplified administration model, which reduces costs and improves network availability, and sets us up for further improvements and increased production line flexibility by leveraging SDN.”

Quanta’s first major Brocade switch deployment was at QSMC Factory. The Brocade ICX 7450, ICX 6450, and ICX 6430 switches used within the plant support BROCADE HYPEREDGE® ARCHITECTURE, which enables consolidated management, shared network services, and scale-out networking to simplify network design, streamline application deployment, reduce management complexity, and save operational costs. Based on the operational benefits achieved at QSMC, Quanta has since deployed Brocade ICX switches as its next-generation network edge at additional QSMC plants.

“Leading-edge manufacturers are increasingly looking to implement Industry 4.0 strategies with smart factories that support strong customization of products under the conditions of highly flexible mass production,” said Henry Zhu, country manager for China, Brocade. “Quanta Computer’s deployment of Brocade SDN-ready network infrastructure on the factory floor, within its manufacturing core network and data center. opens the way for the development of software-defined production lines that are capable of virtual retooling on the fly to dramatically increase flexibility.”

With BROCADE MLXE CORE ROUTERS deployed within the heart of the QSMC campus network and BROCADE VDX® 6740 DATA CENTER SWITCHES in place, Quanta can now support end-to-end SDN. It has also recently deployed the BROCADE SDN CONTROLLER and BROCADE FLOW OPTIMIZER as a foundation for SDN application development, leveraging the OpenFlow support in true hybrid port mode, enabling a smooth transition to SDN without disrupting existing network operations.

Source by http://newsroom.brocade.com

 

For more info about Brocade Products visit ICT Hardware website.

IoT Partnership Makes It Simple For All Companies To Deliver Connected Services, Paves The Way For Smart Cities

Mumbai and San Jose, 15 November 2016 — Reliance Group, India’s leading private sector business house, today announced a strategic partnership with Cisco Jasper for the launch of a new venture, UNLIMIT, solely dedicated to provide Internet of Things (IoT) services to enterprise customers throughout India. UNLIMIT is equipped with the diverse resources of the Reliance Group, the nimbleness of a start-up, high-profile partnerships, and an international management team, and will tap into into the growing potential of the IoT market in the country.

UNLIMIT customers will be able to take advantage of the UNLIMITControlCenter, which is based on the IoT connectivity management platform of Cisco Jasper, and includes Reliance’s powerful mobile network. With UNLIMIT, Reliance becomes the first telecommunications services provider in the country to set up a dedicated IoT business unit committed to helping its Corporate customers achieve their goals. The partnership with Cisco Jasper, which is the industry standard for managed connectivity that simplifies the delivery of IoT services, provides the new venture with a distinct range of service offerings with global delivery standards.

Announcing the launch of the new venture, Mr Juergen Hase, Chief Executive Officer of Unlimit, the IoT Business Unit of Reliance Group, said, “IoT is a critical enabler for India’s growth, and businesses throughout the country are already utilizing its huge potential to help deliver innovative new services to their customers, while reducing cost and increasing revenue. We are delighted to partner with Cisco Jasper, and this strategic partnership will strenghten the market position of UNLIMIT significantly.”

Enabling Smart Cities

In addition to enabling business transformation for companies throughout India, the new IoT service launched by Reliance and Cisco Jasper will also play a key role in making the Digital India project—a government program committed to building 100 Smart Cities to increase the quality of life for residents—a reality. Reliable connectivity and the ability to easily manage the multitude of connected services involved in smart cities are two key requirements to ensure the success of the Digital India initiative. The combination of Reliance’s powerful mobile networks and Cloud Services with the global Cisco Jasper IoT connectivity management platform provides a full suite of solutions for smart city initiatives throughout India.

Making IoT Easy

IoT technology holds a lot of promise for businesses looking to deliver connected services, but many believe the deployment of IoT to be too complex. This partnership makes it simple for companies of any size and in any industry to transform their businesses by offering connected services that enhance their customers’ experiences while enabling new revenue models.

In addition to making it easy to launch IoT services in India, Cisco Jasper partners with 30+ mobile operator groups representing over 120 mobile networks worldwide, making it simple for businesses in India to expand their IoT services to new countries as needed. Likewise, companies using the Cisco Jasper platform outside of India can easily expand their connected services into India on Reliance’s network.

Committing to the Indian Market

Cisco is also expanding its commitment to India by actively hiring world-class IoT engineering talent in India to join the Cisco Jasper team in the Cisco Innovation Center, located in Bangalore. Cisco Jasper has been a leader in the IoT platform market for over a decade, and is seeking engineers who are committed to advancing the IoT technology that is connecting more devices and enabling more IoT services than any other platform in the world.

“We are a company with deep roots in India, as both myself and one of my co-founders were born and raised here,” said Mr Jahangir Mohammed, GM of Cisco Jasper (and former co-founder and CEO of Jasper). “It is inspiring to see both the Government and enterprises throughout India invest in IoT to advance both the country and commerce, which is why we are making our own investment in this market. Reliance Group’s deep commitment to advancing IoT throughout the country makes them an ideal partner.”

Source by https://newsroom.cisco.com

 

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New version includes Live Traffic Fraud Blocking capabilities to prevent loss of revenue before fraudulent activity occurs Frankfurt, Germany (November 1, 2016) – Oculeus, the leading provider of innovative OSS/BSS solutions for telecommunications companies and mobile operators, today announced that the company has released version 5.0 of its Oculeus Anti-Fraud solution.

The new version of the Oculeus Anti-Fraud solution includes Live Traffic Fraud Blocking capabilities. These new capabilities eliminate or significantly reduce potential revenue losses caused by fraudulent traffic as the fraud evaluation and blocking are done in real-time before the start of a call.

These Live Traffic Fraud Blocking features are a new core module in the Oculeus Anti-Fraud solution. It works in conjunction with a SIP redirect server and a pre-call fraud detection engine to efficiently check, monitor and evaluate pre-call call attempts along with internal and external blocking information provided by the system.

“Combating fraud and finding a solution to stop the severe revenue losses that fraud is causing are high on the agendas of executives and account managers of most providers of voice-based communications services in all regions around the world,” explained Arnd Baranowski, CEO of Oculeus. “The new Live Traffic Fraud Blocking capabilities will uniquely help services providers prevent more fraud than ever, even before revenue losses occur.” “We have been working with Oculeus’ solutions for many years now and are consistently impressed with the company’s new innovations,” said Gunnar Berglund, Product Manager at MGI Management GmbH. “We are already in advanced stages of testing the new version of Oculeus’ anti-fraud system and have high expectations that the solution will significantly improve our fraud management efforts.” The Oculeus Anti-Fraud solution enables telecom carriers, mobile operators and other providers of voice-based communications services to prevent revenue loss caused by a growing list of sophisticated methods of fraud, including false answer supervision, PBX hacking, bypassing/SIM boxing, pricing arbitrage and more.

The solution continuously monitors all operator traffic using call attempt evaluations, call records and commercial data to check for traffic anomalies and patterns that are typical of fraud. When fraudulent activities are identified, the system automatically blocks offenders as well as generates alerts to notify involved parties. Offenders that are identified and confirmed as sources of fraud can be immediately blocked from further usage on the service provider’s network.

The Oculeus Anti-Fraud solution runs on Linux services with a web-based front-end, which enables end users to access and manage the system from any browser on a PC, notebook, tablet or smartphone.

Oculeus is currently offering proof-of-concept trials and providing demonstrations of the new version Oculeus Anti-Fraud solution to qualified communications service providers.

Oculeus will be exhibiting its Oculeus Anti-Fraud solution along with its entire portfolio of OSS/BSS solutions at Capacity Europe in Paris, France on November 7-9 at Booth 76 and AfricaCom in Cape Town, South Africa on November 14-17 at Booth F44.

Source by http://www.tmcnet.com

Artificial intelligence and its machine learning subset are all the rage these days. That was evident when I spoke this week at the AI World event, which was packed with vendors and users seeking to understand what the hell AI and machine learning are—and wanting to know how they could use this old but revitalized technology effectively.

Amazon Web Services, Google, IBM, Microsoft, and the other major cloud providers all have machine learning services in their clouds now. But most enterprises have no clue on what the heck to do with machine learning systems, whether cloud or on-premises. Here’s some quick guidance.

The right use cases for machine learning get the real value

It is critical to find the right uses for machine learning. For the most part, simple applications that update databases and perform simple calculations are not a good fit. Just because machine learning is cheap in the cloud does not mean it should be applied everywhere.

Instead, you should seek repetitive tasks typically done by a person now. When such tasks are truly rote, you can automate them such as through a robot in an assembly line.

But many tasks people perform require judgement and analysis to determine the right solution. These tasks typically have patterns of discovery and resolution, so in most cases a person repeats the same set of diagnostics, then applies a known solution.

Machine learning can do that, too, automating the discovery and solution after using a knowledge engine to determine the patterns a human expert uses. A knowledge engine can learn as it operates, exactly like people, so the system can in some ways reprogram itself to get better at its job over time. And it’s cheaper than a person.

Examples of tasks that are good fits for machine learning include fraud detection, risk analytics, maintenance scheduling, quality assurance, and medical diagnoses. (When an AI system can’t figure out the problem or solution, it then kicks the issue to a human expert.)

Bind machine learning systems to the data—in the cloud

Even when a task is a fit for machine learning, how do you know that automation should be done in the cloud? The most compelling reason is that you can colocate in the cloud your machine learning applications with cheap data storage.

Machine learning has no value without data. Data provides patterns to the knowledge engine, in the same way that a person may look through several reference books for patterns, or models, to better understand new and changed data. Thus, you need to bind machine learning systems to as much data as you can. The cloud is the best place to do that.

By David S. Linthicum, Source by http://www.infoworld.com

 

For more about Cloud services visit ICT Hardware official website.

BANGALORE, INDIA–(Marketwired – Nov 8, 2016) – Brocade (NASDAQ: BRCD) today announced that FUJITSU CONSULTING INDIA has successfully deployed an end-to-end, software-defined networking (SDN) infrastructure to support operations at its new 2,000-seat Global Delivery Center (GDC) in Pune and Bangalore. This agile and programmable network has enabled the IT consulting and integration services provider to run a highly dynamic, 24×7 GDC environment designed to meet the most stringent requirements from Fujitsu Consulting’s international client base.

Fujitsu Consulting India selected the Brocade^® networking solution based on its superior scalability, robustness, small environmental footprint, manageability, low total cost of ownership, and support for open standards. In particular, the company felt that open standards were critical to fully realizing the benefits of SDN, opening the door for Brocade’s successful proposal, which was supported by a strong proof-of-concept.

“Being successful in outsourced development requires more than just great design and programming talent. It also needs a high-performance IT infrastructure capable of keeping development teams productive 24×7, with the flexibility to emulate clients’ environments, which are of an increasingly hybrid-cloud nature,” said Mr. Mohammed Shahed Khan, Group Head IT & CISO, Fujitsu Consulting. “In putting together the specifications for our new Bangalore GDC and upgrade of the Pune GDC, it was clear that we would need to go beyond traditional networking to deliver the capabilities we see as essential to a successful future. Brocade came to the table with a very compelling solution with strong support for open standards-based SDN, and our operational experience post-deployment has been excellent.”

BROCADE ICX® 7750 SWITCHES form the campus network core at the new Fujitsu GDC, offering 96 wire-speed 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) ports per switch and the capability to integrate up to a dozen switches into a high-performance stack. The stack can be managed as a single device delivering up to 5.76 Tbps of aggregated stacking bandwidth. This high level of performance, scalability, and port density has allowed Fujitsu to dedicate eight 10 GbE links to each of the BROCADE ICX 7250 STACKABLE SWITCHES, which provide wire-speed 1 GbE network access, with power-over-Ethernet to support IP phones, Wi-Fi access points, and other devices. By adding switches to the Brocade ICX 7750 stack, Fujitsu will be able to easily accommodate a 1,000-seat expansion to the GDC during the coming year.

In addition to the campus network infrastructure, Fujitsu has also deployed BROCADE VDX® 6740 SWITCHES in the GDC data center. The switches form a high-performance, low-latency 10 GbE fabric that is both self-forming and self-healing, and offers ideal performance characteristics for virtualized data center operations. All the Brocade switches at the Fujitsu GDC fully support the OpenFlow SDN protocol, enabling the IT staff to programmatically reconfigure both physical and virtual networks on-the-fly to meet the diverse IT requirements of simultaneous client development projects.

“Working in partnership with Fujitsu Consulting India to help them realize the full benefits of SDN has been a remarkable experience for Brocade in India’s offshore service provider market,” said Edgar Dias, senior regional director for Brocade India. “It also reflects the fact that, in today’s digital business era, legacy network architecture and technology are no longer anywhere near capable of meeting the needs of developers and business operations. Fujitsu Consulting’s new GDC represents the future, with a strong buy-in to what the New IP can deliver.”

Source by http://newsroom.brocade.com

Visit ICT Hardware website to know the latest news about Brocade products & Fujitsu products.

Organizations of all kinds are pursuing big data for one big reason: If they can extract the right data at the right time, they can use it for insights that open new ways to make money or ways to save money, like reducing their operating costs.

But organizations can’t just dive into the data. Data is everywhere today, just not in a format suitable for analytics tools. Big data in the wild doesn’t do anyone any good.

To make big data cough up its secrets, organizations must move it to their data environment and convert it into a usable format. The process of cleaning data into a format that enables “actionable insights” can be called “data optimization.”

Data optimization often has four steps: data virtualization, preparation, exploration, and prediction. These steps are how organizations start collecting the actionable intelligence and insights from big data that lead to more sales and lower expenses.

This first in a series of four blog posts explains how each of these steps relates to the next one. It also discusses why it’s crucial to learn the right sets of skills and competencies to enable data monetization.

So, let’s start by talking about data virtualization.

Using Data Without Knowing Where It Is

The first step toward making the most of big data is data virtualization. Data virtualization lets an application retrieve and use data even if that application doesn’t know the data’s format or physical location.

Here’s an example of how that might work. Think of a major global architectural engineering firm. The firm has three decades of onsite photos taken by project engineers. These photos show how work has progressed in the field. Think about syncing all of these photos on employees’ smart phones with their laptops, desktop computers, and digital cameras. The firm gathers all of these images in the cloud to make slideshows for potential customers.

In today’s world, it is not unusual for a large corporation to have its data reside in various locations—from on premises to the cloud. The corporation might have sales data on employee desktops, as well as on CRM cloud or partner networks. Anyone putting together a presentation that needs information from all of these different data sources will find it tough going.

Data virtualization can connect to all these data sources with adapters. It uses this approach to pull together all the data automatically in real time and on a constant basis.

Instead of dealing with multiple different sources of data, data virtualization automates all the data interfaces at all these different layers. Now all that data sits in a virtual data bin where you can work with it.

This is data virtualization. It enables you to retrieve data without having to know its new file path. You probably don’t know where all of the data is now stored because an abstraction layer hides those technical details. This abstraction layer is data virtualization.

Data Virtualization Offers Advantages

Data virtualization has a lot to offer. It cuts the costs of data replication. Not moving data lowers the expenses of storing and networking data. Organizations get more use out of existing servers and networks.

Data virtualization also makes organizations more agile. When they can get to their data instantly no matter where it is, they can respond much faster to constantly changing conditions.

Data virtualization makes data more visible. This speeds up decision making by a factor of 5 to 10 times. Better data visibility also leads to better decisions. Everyone in the organization who needs data to make those decisions can access it.

To improve IT’s effectiveness, it is critical to learn how to implement and use data virtualization technologies. As the first step in data management, data virtualization is the foundation for the entire process.

Without data virtualization, the simple act of finding all of an organization’s data is tough if not impossible. And if you can’t find your data, you cannot take the next step: data preparation. That will be the topic of the second post in this series about the first steps toward making the most of big data.

By Neeraj Chadha

Source by https://learningnetwork.cisco.com

 

 

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Cisco accelerates the transition to active data and delivers new consumption model for hybrid cloud software

SAN JOSE, Calif—November 1, 2016– Cisco today introduced the UCS S-Series: a new storage-optimized server category in the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) portfolio, designed specifically to address the needs of data intensive workloads such as Big Data, and for  deploying software-defined storage, object storage, and data protection solutions. The UCS S- Series can handle the rapid growth of unstructured data created by the Internet of Things, video, mobility, collaboration and analytics so that businesses can access and analyze data quickly to generate insights in real time.

 

Data. Unstored.

Data has become the lifeblood of every organization, and the way it’s used is changing rapidly. Traditionally, data was warehoused and accessed intermittently.  Industry analysts estimate that less than 40 percent of stored enterprise data is ever used to create insight. New applications such as video analytics, diagnostic imaging, streaming analytics, and machine learning demand and create data that is “un-stored” and actively processed in real time. Traditional static IT infrastructure no longer works in a world of continuous insight and innovation, while public cloud storage solutions can become expensive as data sets grow quickly and unpredictably.

“IDC sees a dramatic shift in how new technologies are being applied to solve business problems and drive strategic growth in this, the 3rd platform era,” said Matt Eastwood, SVP, Enterprise Infrastructure and Datacenter, IDC.  “Organizations are transforming themselves digitally and as they do so they are stressing the need to bring their compute and data resources closer together. Next gen applications including big data analytics remain top IT objectives and as data becomes increasingly strategic, core storage infrastructure is being redefined in software as a server workload.”

 

Introducing the UCS S3260 Storage Server

The UCS S3260 Storage Server, the first in the UCS S-series, delivers the versatility, rapid scalability and cloud connectivity customers need to transform their data into business intelligence and insights. With the first fully modular architecture in the industry and the automation of UCS Manager, the S3260 lowers total cost of ownership (TCO) by over 50 percent compared to public cloud, with the ability to right-size infrastructure to efficiently power every workload.

Compared with traditional servers, the UCS S3260:

• Reduces CapEx by up to 34 percent
• Lowers ongoing management by up to 80 percent
• Reduces cabling by up to 70 percent
• Takes up to 60 percent less space
• Consumes up to 59 percent less power

 

The UCS S3260 provides a wide range of capacity and performance options with up to 600 Terabytes of storage capacity per system, frictionless scaling up to Petabytes with UCS Manager, cache acceleration, and unified I/O connectivity for any type of data storage. With these capabilities, organizations can move from inactive data in warehouses and clouds to dynamic applications on a cloud-scale platform with high-speed processing to activate, analyze and act on data in real time.

“We store millions of voice records for our end users every month,” said Brian Humphreys, Vice President of Infrastructure Delivery at Xerox. “The UCS S-Series provides us a more cost-effective means of offering them this service with second-tier storage. UCS management provides us with even greater efficiencies for running our operations worldwide.”

“Just as Cisco utilized its networking expertise to build a server that is tightly integrated with the network and virtualization layers, Cisco is now applying its expertise to storage,” said Eric Hester, co-founder and CTO, GreenCloud. “We know UCS is reliable, we can use the same Cisco® management tools we already use, and with the Cisco storage-optimized server we improved density by 25 percent over a white-box solution.”

“Fast storage is essential for instant recovery, which makes Cisco UCS® S-Series the key to making it work,” said Dan Timko, President & CTO, Cirrity. “We couldn’t have developed our vStream Vault without Cisco.”

“Enterprise storage is moving from traditional, dedicated platforms to commodity hardware; but not all commodity hardware is created equal,” said Steven Hill, senior storage analyst with 451 Research. “Cisco’s new UCS S-Series offers substantial drive density and scalable x86 hardware options, making it easily customizable for any number of optimized SDS applications. Added to this is the S-Series’ deep integration with Cisco’s UCS management and datacenter automation platforms, not to mention Cisco’s world-wide support and service capabilities.”

 

Next Generation Cisco ONE Enterprise Cloud Suite

Cisco also announced the next generation of its ONE Enterprise Cloud Suite, a hybrid cloud software solution that offers freedom of choice for application teams and delivers a self-service portal that can be tailored for end users, application developers and IT professionals. Cisco ONE Enterprise Cloud Suite now delivers hybrid cloud for automation across the entire IT organization and user base. With this solution teams can deploy to over 20 different data center, private and public cloud environments. In addition, new annual subscription licenses in one, three, and five-year options enable customers to choose the right automation plan at the most cost-effective price point.

The ONE Enterprise Cloud Suite has four offers, which can be used singly or in any combination.

• Infrastructure Automation: Speeds time to market through consistent and faster delivery of error-free infrastructure environments to business and application teams.  Service Management: Empowers customers with self-service order and service management through a simple, intuitive user interface
• Cloud Management: Enables faster time to market while reducing development costs by modeling application profiles once and deploying to multiple hybrid environments
• Big Data Automation: Drives consistency with one-click installation, provisioning and deployment of Hadoop and Splunk clusters.  Reduces risk with near real-time diagnostics and historical analysis.

 

Cisco ASAP Data Center

These additions are part of Cisco’s evolving next generation data center architecture which enables enterprise organizations to incorporate the best aspects of cloud and on-premise data centers. The result is a complete, secure, and agile hybrid cloud platform. Organizations are increasingly under pressure to rapidly deliver new services and applications, and many are transitioning to a Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CICD) model.At the same time, digital transformation is resulting in the creation of thousands of new enterprise applications that are becoming the primary interface between the customer and the enterprise, especially for digital transactions. To meet these challenges, Cisco’s strategy is to provide a data center architecture that enables customers to Analyze, Simplify,Automate, and Protect their data and applications:  the ASAP data center. Cisco’s architecture provides unique advantages through the integration of analytics, networking, compute, and security with consistent policies within the data center and across data centers and clouds.

 

New UCS Developer Center on Cisco DevNet

To support Cisco customers and partners in their automation journey with UCS Director, Cisco DevNet has revamped the UCS Developer Center to make it easier for developers to leverage the UCS Manager and UCS Director APIs for DevOps automation.  Enhancements include new self-paced learning labs with personalized learning tracks for Infrastructure and Application Developers.

 

Cisco Open Pay

Open Pay from Cisco Capital provides a flexible way to acquire Cisco Unified Computing System solutions and select converged infrastructure storage solutions to meet both demand spikes. By paying for variable capacity as it is needed, customers can better align future payments to actual usage.

 

Source by https://newsroom.cisco.com

ICT Hardware is one of Cisco Reseller

3D printing has been poised to transform travel for several years. We’re now seeing the beginnings of 3D printed airplane food, jet engines, cars, and even space station equipment. How will 3D printing improve how we get from one place to another? Here are a few jet-setting innovations happening at the intersection of 3D printing and travel.

Air travel

• Airplane manufacturers are exploring the pros of 3D printing for various mechanical parts. Airbus, for example, announced that its next-generation A350 XWB is using a handful of 3D-printed components. Engineers at GE Aviation have created a 3D-printed jet engine—and taken it all the way to 33,000 RPM.¹
• What will tomorrow’s airplane food taste like? Concepts are underway for 3D-printed sky meals made to order for each traveler. Called the Sky Kitchen, it’s an on-demand food system that lets travelers design their own meal on a screen, then have it printed and ready to eat.
• Way in the future, could you imagine printing a new suitcase (and its contents) if you lose your luggage? That’s what Finnish artist Janne Kyttanen is envisioning. In her exhibit “Lost Luggage,” Kyttanen designed an entirely 3D-printed outfit, including shoes and a bag.
• Of course, a 3D-printed luggage tag could prevent your luggage from getting lost at all.

Healthcare away from home

• The medical advances in 3D printing are very important for a traveler who gets sick. Everything from missing pills to a carefully-fitted orthopedic brace could be digitally downloaded from a patient’s files and manufactured at their destination. A recent study predicts that by 2018 the 3D printing market for healthcare will reach $4043 million²—so expect medical advances much earlier than printable luggage or meals.
• Blended Reality, the fusing of our physical and digital worlds, is a versatile concept that can extend to the chemical and biological world. In the convergence of healthcare diagnostics and digital health, it can play a fundamental role in transforming human biology and enabling personalized drug treatments.

Automotive travel

• The automotive industry is hard at work on its own 3D engineering. A recent report suggests that 3D printing in the automotive industry will generate a combined $1.1 billion by 2019.³
• Take Subaru, which has developed a way to 3D-print a working scale model of a Subaru Impreza WRX boxer engine.
• Other manufacturers are 3D-printing entire cars. Check out the LM3D Swim by Local Motors: It’s an electric car made up of 80% plastic and 20% carbon fiber, and its manufacturer claims it’s highway-ready (once it’s available, of course).⁴
• Does your car need a spare part? Instead of having your car sit in the local repair shop for days while it’s on order, the shop could simply print up what you need. That’s what Audi is working on. The German car maker is experimenting with metal 3D printing tech that may eventually extend to their production line and authorized dealers.

Space travel

• 3D printing is hugely important to space travel—not only to help our current astronauts on the International Space Station, but also to figure out ways to sustain ourselves for extended periods of time in space or even on other planets.
• NASA’s 3D printer has already manufactured 3D-printed objects in space, paving the way for future innovations. 3D printing at zero-Gs is an important step towards deep space travel.
• Much of 3D printing tech for space is still in the experimental stages, but there are simpler 3D-printed items available on the International Space Station. While the astronauts don’t have fully 3D-printed meals yet, they are able to enjoy freshly-brewed coffee in a 3D-printed cup. Fresh produce is something the astronauts also miss; hopefully they’ll be able to print up fruit someday, too.

Travel is just one of the many arenas getting revolutionized by 3D printing. As one of the biggest innovators in 3D printing today, HP recently introduced its line of HP Jet Fusion 3D printers, which use exclusive Multi Jet Technology to break through all of the limitations of current 3D printing: speed, quality, and cost. From innovative home and office 2D printers to revolutionary 3D printers, HP continuously takes creativity and productivity to a whole new dimension.

 

Source by http://www8.hp.com

ICT Hardware is one of HP Reseller Europe